From Kenneth Bailey’s “Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes”

In the concluding decades of the last century the late Hussein bin Talal was King of Jordan. Many unforgettable stories circulate orally around the Middle East about the king. I first heard the following account in Lebanon, and two decades later I was able to confirm it from a high-ranking American intelligence officer who was serving in Jordan at the time the incident took place. The story is as
follows:

One night in the early 1980s, the king was informed by his security police that a group of about seventy-five Jordanian army officers were at that very moment meeting in a nearby barracks plotting a military overthrow of the kingdom. The security officers requested permission to surround the barracks and arrest the plotters. After a somber pause the king refused and said, “Bring me a small helicopter.” A helicopter was brought. The king climbed in with the pilot and himself flew to the barracks and landed on its flat roof. The king told the pilot, “If you hear gun shots, fly away at once without me.”

Unarmed, the king then walked down two flights of stairs and suddenly appeared in the room where the plotters were meeting and quietly said to them:
Gentlemen, it has come to my attention that you are meeting here tonight to finalize your plans to overthrow the government, take over the country and install a military dictator. If you do this, the army will break apart and the country will be plunged into civil war. Tens of thousands of innocent people will die. There is no need for this. Here I am! Kill me and proceed. That way, only one man will die.

After a moment of stunned silence, the rebels as one, rushed forward to kiss the king’s hand and feet and pledge loyalty to him for life.

King Hussein opted for total vulnerability. He acted nobly and by so doing he fanned into flame the dying embers of the rebels’ sense of honor.